A Day Off
by ok no
Summary: In which Wheatley comes back via convenient back up files, turns GLaDOS - and in the process himself - human, puts a corrupt-in-a-bad-way AI in charge of the facility, and generally messes things up. So much for apologizing. Wheatley/GLaDOS on hiatus


GLaDOS slowly awoke, finding it far too bright to open her eyes fully. She lay somewhere warm, soft, and really quite comfortable. How nice.

For a moment, she pondered exactly where she was, but found the sheer niceness to be a far better subject of her attention. Really, this warmth was grand. The only other time she'd felt so good was... well, never.

Of course, it did strike her as odd that she'd been asleep at all. As an AI, she didn't really need sleep often, or actually, at all. Hmm.

She sighed and adjusted herself, deciding that since she'd started sleeping now, she'd continue. At least for a little while longer. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes happily.

Abruptly it occurred to her, far slower than it should have, that she was, in fact, breathing.

This was quite a concern, you see, as, again, being an AI, she'd never breathed much before. Nor had she felt warmth without a thermometer (or without being dropped into an incinerator), or softness, or, well, comfort.

Immediately, she sat up (having never done that before, either). GLaDOS looked around the warmly lit room, eyes wide. It was a clean, simple room. Aperture Science's Patent-Pending Real-False Sunlight poured in through slits in one wall, mimicking what she assumed was supposed to be morning on the surface.

What was more pressing than the door, obviously, was what she saw when she looked down.

It appeared now that somehow, in some way, she'd ended up... human. A feat that in and of itself was completely and utterly impossible. Right? This was some crazy dream sequence, brought on by too much testing and not enough neurotoxin use... right?

No. It wasn't. AIs couldn't dream. So then... this was real?

GLaDOS stared down at the white sheet draped over her lower half, at her hands resting on her thighs. Thin, spindly, feminine... she was growing ever-more disgusted with what she'd been turned into. She pulled off the sheet to reveal her legs, equally thin - almost unhealthily so - and covered by a pair of long, dark pants. Her clothes, she noted, were similar to that of the long-dead Aperture scientists, lab-coat and all. At this, she scowled.

She teetered up, realizing that it might take a moment to master standing, and forget walking. Placing a hand on the paint-chipped wall, she hobbled slowly towards the wall a few feet before her. Glancing down, she realized the room was quite as clean as she first thought. Miscellaneous debris littered the floor and panels of the walls were jaggedly broken in odd places.

This must be one of the damaged relaxation chambers, she thought, and it appears to be at least somewhat functional. Though, for a brief moment she wondered how long she'd actually been in the damn thing. As well as, if she'd been in there for a while, how close the facility was to, oh, blowing up.

Regardless, GLaDOS seemed to be gaining more balance as she went, relying less and less on the wall for support. Finally, she crept over to a mirrored wall not too far from the bed (having taken an alternate, more wall-oriented route, it took her much longer to reach). She paused, for a moment, to go over her appearance. Shoulder-length silver hair (which resembled one of the side effects of conversion-gel testing), unfitting and unhealthy-looking light eyes and skin, with a black Aperture uniform and common white lab-coat draped over her quivering frame (also with the Aperture logo embroidered on the upper left breast in blue). To summarize, she looked quite like hell, only without all the burning.

Angrily, she turned around and began towards the scuffed wooden door down the nearby hall, deciding that she was agile enough at the moment to go out into the undoubtedly dangerous facility beyond. Almost tripping on a few chunks of plywood and fiberglass insulation, she made her way to the rusted bronze doorknob, turning it swiftly.

Suddenly everything went black, and she was hit with an intense falling sensation, coupled with an immediate increase in heart-rate. Then, there was a painful jerk at her arm, and the plummeting feeling stopped.

Her heart beat loudly in her ears as she opened her eyes, finding quite an unusual scene. Several feet outside the door was a catwalk, laving a large gap between the two. On the catwalk, holding her arm, was a young man with messy red hair and attire similar to her's. He smiled at her for a moment, before pulling her up and over the old railing.

She landed on her side, in shock, staring downwards at the bottomless pit she'd nearly plummeted into. The man panted heavily, having fallen over as well. He sat a short distance away from her.

"Okay," he huffed, "You're not dead."

GLaDOS looked over at him. He had bright blue eyes, like flashlights. Smiling at her, he stood up and offered her a hand.

Having not mastered the art of walking quite yet, and being rather shaken from her almost-demise, she took it. Once upright, she balanced uncertainly on tremulous limbs, tightly gripping the rail beside her.

"So, a-are you okay?" he asked.

She nodded, thinking for a moment that his voice was somehow... familiar. It made her a little angry.

"Good, good..." he muttered, looking everywhere but at her. "Well, anyways... I just wanted to say... I'm sorry. Really sorry. For everything. I was absolutely terrible, monstrous and, ha, almost killed everyone... and I just wanted to... to apologize."

"...what?" her voice cracked oddly. Having never used it before, this was expected.

He looked back at her, surprised. "You don't remember? But - But I nearly destroyed the facility - And the turret-cubes - Those test chambers – Oh god, don't tell me something was damaged in transfer... Miss, do you know who you are? Oh, of course you do, I made sure of that much... but still... gah! What have I done now?"

The man continued talking like this for a while. GLaDOS watched him, terribly irked by something she couldn't think of. Why did this man annoy her so?

"...But of course the book made sense! And I'm not a moron - But anyways, oh Wheatley, Wheatley, Wheatley, what did you mess up? Think, think - "

"You."

"Hmm? Oh! OH! You remember!" He grinned. "This is great, I – "

He was cut off by a slender fist hitting him square in the jaw. Having remembered exactly who this man was, GLaDOS felt this was the most lenient punishment she could give.

"How did you get back?" she growled. He cowered in fear, and really, he was right to.

"Uh, well, long story. You see, I'm not actually me – well I am, but I'm not; anyways, I'm actually the backup of my – Wheatley's – personality, created when he – or I – or, or, one of us took over your body. When he – I – left the facility, I was booted into a new body. Not this one, obviously, but you know what I mean. A-anyways, yeah..." He stared at the ground, then decided that was probably a bad idea. They were awfully high up.

She glared down at him. If looks could kill, he would have been a skeleton by now.

"Do you know how I ended up in this disgusting body?"

"Oh, uh, well... haha, I kind of p... put you there... you know, to give you a day off! Though, in hindsight that maybe wasn't the best idea, or way of doing so... after all, I did get stuck in this ridiculous body in the process – "

"What?"

He whimpered and pulled further back in fear. "I-I wanted to a-apologize for, you know, almost blowing up the facility and a-all your hard work... so I thought 'I-I know! I'll give her a day off! Let her do what she wants! Of course, she wouldn't be very mobile without her body, so... I'll put her in a human body!' So I went a-and found some severely brain-damaged test subjects, wiped their minds clean, repaired the broken bits, and ta-da! Here we are!" He grinned up at her, accentuating it with a few little hand-motions.

She just stared at him for a moment, a mix of shock, horror, and hatred bubbling in her mind. Jerkily, she backed of for a moment, letting this information sink in, formulating a logical response. Of course, her logical-response processor hadn't made it into this thing. So she didn't have that. Instead, she decided to follow instinct, or impulse, or whatever it was, and kick the red-haired man before her in the groin.

"AUUGHH!" He toppled over and onto the catwalk. GLaDOS held back a smile.

Wheatley's eyes watered. "W-what the hell was that for?" he called, but she had already began walking in the opposite direction. Shakily, he attempted to get up, still gripping his bruised crotch for dear life (having not realized human males were so sensitive down there, which was probably something to take note of).

"G-GLaDOS, wait up!" He limped after her. She ignored him.

Upon catching up, the catwalk let out a groan. He looked down in worry, and for a moment thought it might collapse and send them to their doom. Falling really wasn't something he wanted to have to deal with again.

Suddenly, the woman ahead of him stopped and turned around, looking down at him pointedly.

"You're going to put me back into my body, and get out of my sight. After that, if you give me so much as an inkling of your location, I will hunt you down, and I will kill you. Over and over, until I'm satisfied." she spat.

Wheatley proceeded to slide backwards bit by bit, laughing nervously as he did. "Eheh, well, you see, there's a slight, very slight problem with that plan..."

Still glaring, GLaDOS quirked a brow.

"It's a real minor issue, you know, nothing big. Nothing – nothing big. I mean it's not like, fatal, or anything – at least, I hope not; I didn't really check. This whole operation was sort of just hit or miss – but anyways. Real small problem with you're plan. I, uh, don't know how to... put... us... back..."

"You're kidding me," she hissed.

"No, no, unfortunately I'm... I'm really not," he sighed, finally realizing how awful this whole predicament was.

"How can you be that much of a moron to not see the infinite flaws in this whole plot?"

"I AM NOT - well, actually... You see, being a back-up and all, and having been in storage for such a long time. I'm quite probably somewhat flawed. Probably." He put a finger to his chin. "Of course, I could also be wholly intact. So therefore no, I am not a moron. Not at all."

With that, GLaDOS's hand met with her face in quite a suitable reaction.

"So, idiot ball," she said, "You're saying that you've managed to get us both stuck in human bodies somewhere in the decrepit nether-regions of the facility, and you've left the various nuclear reactors and dangerous, possibly-exploding machinery unmanned? As I'm currently unable to grasp the levels of stupidity you've committed, what with this inferior human mind and all."

"Oh no, of course not!" he said, sounding almost relieved that she hadn't mauled him. "I left someone perfectly competent in charge. You see, I wasn't the only backup drive sitting in that cupboard. Yours was there, too. So I decided, to avoid the whole core-meltdown-and-then-flaming-death issue, I'd put your backup in charge! She'd know how to! Of course, there were a few, oh, minor errors during upload. Probably nothing. A few, maybe twenty, little popups asking for stuff. Oh, and at one point everything went all blue and white, then red, with nasty warnings of, I think, cake deletion and malicious content. Then it just shut off. Being the computer savvy beast I am, I restarted the machine, and everything appeared perfect. All uploaded and neat and tidy and – hey wait, where are you going? You don't even know where we are anymore." He ran after her, having bolted away rather rudely while he was talking. Honestly, where did she think she was going?

Meanwhile, several miles above, a computer flashed dimly in a small back room. A single line of text sat in the corner of the screen.

"Error Code: 36594. Malicious Content has been uploaded to the mainframe, causing severe corruption of the main core. Continue with core upload?"

Something, somewhere, hit the enter key, and the screen went blank.

"It's time for science."

* * *

><p>an: sooooo... hi.

well, i've done it. i've written a fic for (a game i've never played) portal. it's senseless, it's mad, it's... fairly likely to not get updated that often, as i'm lazy with everything. this is no exception.

anywho, yeah. i hope you enjoyed this potfest. i do hope no one went too OOC here, and that wheatley's dialogue is not gay. because bro, i worked so hard on that shit. but yeah. me being a huge faggot and all, it probably is pretty hurrtastic.

i also have no real clue where i'm going with this. ttly walking alone, in the dark, with nothing but a defective turret to guide me. so we're both blind, and lacking bullets. derpy as hell, brah. derpy. as. hell.


End file.
